A Gambler's Lucky Streak
by Ithilwen C. Malfoy
Summary: Harry and Snape are trapped at the mercy of Lucius Malfoy. What doyou do when you have 45 minutes left to live? You learn to dance... Not a happy fic. Slash.


Title: A Gambler's Lucky Streak

Author: Ithilwen C. Malfoy

Rating: High PG-13

Pairing: HP/SS

Summary: Harry and Snape are trapped in a Death Eater's bondage den at the mercy of Lucius Malfoy and their time is running out. What do you do when you have 45 minutes left to live? You learn to dance…

Disclaimer: All characters and concepts belong to J.K. Rowling and various publishers including, but not exclusive to, Bloomsbury Publishing, Scholastic Books and Warner Bros. Plot, however, is mine. No financial gain is being made from this story.

'Dancing Cheek to Cheek' is by Irving Berlin.

Notes: Inspired, strangely, by 'Save a Prayer' by Duran Duran, specifically these lines: 'And you wanted to dance, so I asked you to dance, but fear is in your soul./Some people call it a one night stand, but we can call it paradise./Don't say a prayer for me now, save it till the morning after.' 

~~~~~

There were no roses for Harry Potter this Valentine's Day. No dwarves singing terrible poetry, no cards bearing declarations of undying love from people he hardly knew. Ordinarily this would have been a welcome change. Taking Harry's current situation into account, however, singing dwarves and bad poetry would have been an improvement. 

Trying to ignore the blinding pain behind his right eye and the taste of blood in his mouth, he shuffled as best he could, his feet and hands bound, over to the slumped figure in the opposite corner. Through the darkness he could barely make out the shape of a bowed head and, he realised with an uncomfortable lurch in his chest, he could no longer hear any breathing…  

"Snape!" he hissed, "Are you alright?" Getting no response, he edged nearer, and tried again, "Severus, for fuck's sake, are you alright?"

"Apart from being tied up in a dungeon with you awaiting my imminent _death_, Potter, yes. I was concentrating on undoing my bonds. Keep quiet."  

Harry glared through the darkness in what he felt to be Severus' general direction and felt a little of the tension in his chest loosen with relief. When Severus Snape stopped being a snarky git, you had permission to worry. 

Having worked and fought side-by-side with the man for the best part of three years, Harry had the right to be worried about him. He had, after three years of insults, regular verbal abuse and shockingly foul language, earned the right to be concerned. If his fifteen year-old self could have seen him now, tied up in the darkness of what appeared to be a Death Eater's torture chamber (either that or Lucius Malfoy had an unhealthy interest in sado-masochism and was planning to use the two of them for purposes far more horrid than even Harry had previously considered), worrying not for his own life, but for that of Severus Snape, Harry didn't doubt that he would have thrown himself off the top of the Astronomy Tower at the first opportunity. 

Now, however, he wasn't quite sure where his relationship with Snape stood. He would hesitate to describe them as friends, but there was a certain respect and easy camaraderie which came from having a united cause and a shared dislike of social activities outside the confines of work. And all Harry knew right now was that he had, only minutes before, been more terrified at the thought of being in this mess without Snape than being here at the mercy of the blond psychopath a few floors above them, somewhere in the upper part of the house.

"How exactly, without a wand, do you intend to get out of these ropes?" Harry asked.

"Are the words 'keep quiet' not explicit enough for you, Potter?" Snape snapped, his annoyance once again strangely reassuring. "Our continued existence may be of little interest to you, but I for one do not intend to spend my last hours listening to Lucius Malfoy crow about his own colossal genius." There was intent silence for a moment, then the sound of the last few strands of rope tearing. A few seconds' more silence as Snape untied his ankles, and then Harry heard him stumble to his feet. 

"Where are you going?" Harry asked impatiently when he heard Snape shuffle a little further away. 

"I'm not going to escape without you, Potter, stop panicking. I'm looking for a torch."

"A torch? This is a Death Eater bondage den, not a D.I.Y. shop."

There was the soft hiss and flare of a flame catching, and Harry blinked in the sudden glow of the ignited torch. "Stop wittering, Potter." Snape came towards him and handed him the torch, "hold this."

Harry did so and gazed around their dank prison. Wincing as whatever Snape was using to cut through the ropes slipped a little, he took in the strong suggestion of a chain fetish, and the many pointy objects which adorned the walls.

"Bugger."

"Quite," Snape said, calmly slicing through the last of Harry's ropes.

"How did you manage that?" Harry asked, looking down at the frayed ends of the cut rope. 

"Lucius has always relied upon the fact that without a wand a wizard is, for all intents and purposes, helpless." Severus held up a small, silver blade which glinted in the torchlight, as though to demonstrate the falsity of this belief, "Knife down my boot."   

"Oh yes, very cunning," said Harry.

"Yes, I rather think it is," Severus said, ever so slightly smug. "Not that it will help us in the slightest in the advent of our impending deaths."

Harry, who had been untying his ankles, looked up, "What _are_ you talking about? It may have escaped your notice, but now that I'm not tied up, I'm going to start looking for a way out."

"And therein lies the flaw in your fantastic plan, Potter." Snape had resumed his position in the corner and was massaging the circulation back into his ankles, "There _is_ no way out."

"Don't be ridiculous. How do you know? You haven't even looked…" Harry cast a horrified look at Snape, "Unless you've been in here before! Oh, how disgusting!"

"A Minion of Darkness must hold his revels somewhere, Potter, and this décor happens to be in complete accordance with the General Code of Death Eater Interior Design."  

"I have never, nor do I ever at any point in the future want to know why you were here or what you were doing," Harry said, shuddering. "We must be able to get out. The dark, strangely damp, oddly smelling dungeon _always_ has a secret passageway or a previously undiscovered window." This was said with an air of desperate hopefulness which soon disappeared at the look on Snape's face.

"Lucius may have utterly failed to notice the fact that I have half the contents of my laboratory down my boots, but he isn't foolish enough to present us with a means of escape. Even if we had our wands, we would be unable to perform magic. We are trapped."

"You're lying, or joking, and if you are you're even more twisted than I thought. I _will_ find a way ohhh…" Harry groaned, pulling himself to his feet and immediately regretting it. 

"Sit down, Potter. Are you injured?" Severus asked sharply. 

Harry dropped swiftly back onto the floor, "Until now I hadn't thought so. Jesus, my head…" Reaching up he gingerly pushed back his fringe. Pulling back his hand, he saw blood on his fingers. "Ah."

"Indeed. Why did you not say something earlier, Potter?" Snape demanded, walking over and sinking to the ground before Harry. The long, cool fingers pushed away Harry's hands and gently probed the gash on his forehead. Harry winced.

"I told you, I didn't realise _earlier_," Harry said crossly. "Do you think I'd have tried to stand up if I had?"

"Do try not to sulk," Snape murmured, peering suspiciously at the cut above Harry's eye. "It would thoroughly spoil my death if the last thing I saw was your scowling face."

Harry resisted the urge to stick his tongue out, "Oh, Severus, I never knew you cared."

Severus simply raised an eyebrow and Harry became suddenly, uncomfortably aware of their proximity. Realising that he had been staring at Snape's bottom lip, he embarrassedly dropped his gaze and found his eyes resting on the older man's chest

"Shit, Severus!" He gasped, "You're bleeding too!"

Snape looked down, removing his hands from Harry's hair. "Barely, Potter. Don't be melodramatic."

"You stupid fool, it's practically _gushing_!" Harry exclaimed. "Sit back against the wall."

"I'll take no orders from you, Potter."

"Oh, just do it."

Severus complied, albeit grudgingly. "What do you think you're doing?" He asked without much venom. 

"I'm going to stop that bleeding," Harry replied. He had taken off his cloak and was ripping a wide strip of material from it. "Take your robe off. And your shirt."

"Excuse me? You expect me to strip for you now?"

"Just for once could you try not to argue with everything I say?" Harry asked, paying little attention to Severus' indignant expression, "Please?"

So Severus slowly, grumbling all the while, shrugged off his robes and removed his shirt. Harry knelt next to him and, after watching the pale skin slowly appear, marred by a bloody gash above Severus' heart, began to wipe away the dirt around the wound. After a half-hearted attempt to slap away Harry's hands, Severus acquiesced, and Harry pretended not to notice when his eyes slipped closed, a small grimace falling across his face. Harry then took the makeshift bandage and began to wind it round Severus' chest, starting a little as his hand touched bare skin. 

"That was utterly unnecessary. You over-reacted, as usual," Severus complained after Harry had finished. "There was barely enough blood to fill a small sacrificial chalice."

"Oh, shut up and put your shirt on," Harry said. 

Severus lifted his head from the wall and opened one eye, "Don't think that simply because I am injured you may patronise me, Potter."

"What are you going to do, bleed on me?" Harry retorted. 

Severus appeared to consider this, then settled to glaring with his one open eye. Harry sank down next to him and stretched out his legs.

~~~~~

"… On reflection, it was possibly a bad idea to rip up the cloak," Harry said after a while. "We'll die of cold before Malfoy gets a chance to kill us. He'll find our shrivelled corpses. Hypothermia will accomplish what Voldemort never managed."

Severus said nothing. A moment later, Harry opened his eyes as warm, heavy material was slung around him. He and Severus were now sharing the single remaining cloak, which, until a moment earlier, had been around the older man's shoulders.

"Don't say it, Potter…"

"… Thanks, Severus."

~~~~~

They sat in silence for a long while in the flickering shadows and the dancing half-light of the torch, and Harry was almost comfortable. He leaned into the warmth of Severus' shoulder next to him and the heavy comfort of the cloak, and he was about to fall asleep. 

Then the cold started to seep through his jeans and the wall against the back of his head was very hard, and Harry blinked, sitting up a little more straight. "Severus?" he said quietly, "Are you asleep?"

There was silence for a moment then, gruffly, Severus replied, "My back is stiff, this bandage is very tight, and you are leaning on my hand, Potter. Of course I'm not asleep."

"Sorry," Harry said unconvincingly, moving to allow Severus his hand back. "You were quiet, that's all."

"I suppose it would be out of the question for you to be quiet as well."

"I'm not just going to sit here and brood until Lucius comes to… do whatever he wants to do to us," Harry replied.

"Worried that the depth of thought might kill you?"

"Oh, shut up." Harry paused, "Actually, I was thinking about school… You know, Ron and Hermione… All the people we won't see again."

"Not brooding at all, then…" Severus' voice was mocking, but gentle. 

Harry was silent for a second, then, "I've lost my bet, as well."

"Bet?"

"That I'd learn to dance if it was the last thing I did." Harry's head was bowed and his voice quiet, "Hermione can take five galleons out of my Gringotts account for that."

"Of all the times to lose your inexhaustible capacity for mindless optimism, you've picked a particularly poor one," Severus pointed out. 

"Sorry."

"What on earth possessed you to make a bet with Miss Granger over learning to dance?" 

"It was after the seventh year Ball," Harry said glumly, "when I tripped over Hannah Abbot's robes and knocked over the punch bowl. Which landed on Lavender's foot and made her fall over… She fell into Parvati, who knocked over Seamus… and Dean and Padma and Ernie…" Harry sank his head into his hands at the memory, "It was horrible."

"You almost make me regret not attending, Potter." Severus said, smirking.

Harry fixed him with a glare, "You did attend. You always do, you just spend all night out in the grounds glowering darkly and perving on the people in the bushes."

"When we get back to Hogwarts, that comment will lose Gryffindor the House Cup."

"I'm not a student anymore, so with all due respect, _Professor_, bite me."

Severus glowered darkly for a moment, but said nothing and let it pass. When Harry next spoke, it was with a voice so quiet that Severus barely heard him, even in the silence of the cell:

"We're not going back to Hogwarts, are we?"

Severus hesitated before answering, "It would seem not."

"I though not." Then the silence returned, and Harry felt himself drifting, his eyelids falling closed…

"There may be a chance, Potter," Severus said softly, "that I can… distract Lucius and his minions, and allow you to escape…"

"Don't be ridiculous, Severus," Harry said sleepily. "If one of us escapes, we both do. Do you think I'm going to leave you here?"

"I had hoped not."

This time the silence was longer lasting. Harry let himself fall into sleep, let the darkness surround him, and distantly he felt the shift of the warm body next to his to allow him to lean against Severus' chest. And he slept. 

~~~~~

When Harry opened his eyes he was greeted by darkness, penetrated only by the waning light of the torch, which flickered weakly in its wall bracket. Vaguely, he realised that Severus no longer sat next to him cradling Harry against his chest, and he looked into the shadows to see the tall form leaning against a wall, watching him. 

"It is dawn. If my calculations are correct, and you know that they usually are, we have approximately three quarters of an hour to live," Severus said, and stepped out of the shadows as Harry silently digested this news. "Care to dance?"

Harry blinked, "Pardon?"

"In the interests of you winning that bet, would you care to dance?" Severus repeated softly, standing, waiting. 

"Dance?" Harry repeated blankly. 

"Yes, Potter, dance." In Severus' eyes as Harry looked up at him, Harry recognised the silent plea… We are going to die, Potter…

Harry understood. Slowly, hesitatingly, he placed his hand in Severus' and let himself be pulled upwards to stand, gazing at his feet nervously, a terrified fourth year all over again.

"You have to come closer," Severus instructed, and Harry stepped nearer. Severus smelled of sweat and cinnamon. Wordlessly, the older man placed one hand at Harry's hip and brought him closer still, holding him in place. "Hand on my shoulder."

Harry lifted his hand and placed it over the curve of Severus' shoulder, feeling the pulse beat beneath the collar bone, his other hand still caught in Severus'. He thought vaguely that Severus felt pleasingly firm, not fragile and soft, but safe and _here_. And then:

"_Relax_," breathed in his ear, and he let himself be swayed to the rhythm in Severus' head.

This was surprisingly easy, Harry thought as he moved back and forwards, rocking gently with Severus. There was nothing to it. Just sway and hold on and breathe… sweat and cinnamon. A heady combination.

Tentatively Harry moved closer, leaning into Severus' embrace, resting his head against Severus' shoulders. He closed his eyes. This isn't a bad way to die…

He began to hum tunelessly, then to sing, so quietly that Severus barely heard him, "_Heaven, I'm in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek… when we're out together dancing cheek to cheek…_"

He felt arms slip tentatively round his waist to hold him almost tenderly, and he fitted perfectly with this body next to his. They were barely moving now, just holding and being held, two pieces of a jigsaw.

And suddenly Harry was clinging, as though Severus could save him. Harry's arms were around his neck and his face was pressed into Severus' shoulder and he was clinging so tightly. The tears came, fierce and unstoppable, and he never wanted Severus to let him go, because he didn't want to die, not now, not yet.

Severus drew back a little and gazed down at him, frowning, the bitter anger and agony and _want_ in his eyes reflecting exactly what Harry knew was in his own. 

And Severus was so close, his lips wet with Harry's tears, his arms around Harry's waist, and Harry leaned into his embrace and found that one of his hands was tangled in Severus' hair and God, but he never wanted this moment or the ones that followed it to end –

The thump of a door being thrown open to hit the wall behind it.

Harry sagged against Severus' chest, _no, not yet, just another five minutes, please, just five more minutes…_

Severus' arms around him drew away, the smell of cinnamon faded, and Lucius Malfoy began to speak. Harry closed his eyes and waited for the sound of wands being drawn. 

'_Heaven, I'm in heaven…_'

He railed against whichever bastard deities had played their cosmic game with him… and the world went out. 

~~~~~


End file.
